By the way, if you've never used POR15 before, the stuff is magic. It kinda just behaves exactly like you secretly hope it will. And it goes a looooong way. Just don't stain anything, because it'll never come off.

Before/after electrolysis

Metal prepped & POR15'd (now with the ear cut off)

New bearings and ready to go!

As part of my lesson in asking for pics before getting used parts, I found the control arm holes horribly mangled, too!

I dunno how you even do that, because to bend it back, I had to stick it in a vise and use a 4ft cheater bar to get enough leverage to bring it back to nominal. It's now back to within 0.1mm of where it should be!

Problems/Solutions

A common theme for this project was getting smacked down by unanticipated issues.

The first was encountered after turning the UFO hubs down to fit in the rotor hat. Because of the tall chamfer on my rotors, the rotor ended up not being entirely hubcentric (I have an earlier post with more detail). I tried turning material off the face of the hub, but I didn't like how few threads were left over, so I ditched the idea and substituted my old G60 hubs that already have a taller lip.

I could now mount the rotors and calipers, but it was at this point that I ran into an offset problem. Maybe my rotors are wack. Maybe it's the G60 hubs (they have a different offset than UFO). I dunno. The caliper carrier didn't quite center on the rotors. They scraped ever so slightly with the rotor bolted down. Solution? Burn the car down.

Or mill 1.5mm off the carriers to center them. Dealer's choice.

At this point, if you've stumbled across this post searching the same answers I was, you may find a similar post on s2Forum (link) saying to mill the other side of the carrier.

That's because they are using European HP2's from an UrS6, while the B5 HP2's are completely different. In fact, something that I haven't seen explicitly mentioned is that the B5 HP2's mount on the other side of the strut housings. Rather than to sit on the inside face like the G60, UFO, or Euro HP2's, they are mounted on the outside towards the rotor. Enjoy this crudely drawn illustration:

Last note from the install: When I finally got all the hardware mounted, I noticed the pads aren't aligned perfectly on the rotor face (note gap difference under the pads)

The bottom one is spot on, but the upper pads on both sides are too far out from the hub. This causes the pad to overhang very slightly on the edge of the rotor, while leaving the inner part of the rotor untouched. If I were to do it again, I would move the bolt hole inward so that the larger 14mm hole is osculating the original.

Impressions

Well, finally, I got the car back on the road. Initial impressions were concerning when the car veered hard right, but that quickly went away after shedding the coating on the rotors.

The car stops great! The pedal feel is excellent! I have a little mush at first, so I may try and bleed them again, but if you lay into it a bit, the pedal feels much nicer and linear, and man does the car stop!

I am very limited by my tires at the moment, and it's pretty obvious the fronts are trying to lock up before the rears. I'll tackle the rear brakes soon, and hopefully I won't have to add an adjustable proportioning valve.

Recommendation

Would I do it again? Nope! If you've got a UFO car and HP2's, all the power to ya, but for much less effort, and basically the same cost, I could have run some 17Z's on brackets designed for G60 strut housings and know everything would just bolt up.

I'm happy with how it turned out, but my recommendation would be to go 17/18Z for a proper setup and HP2 if you want a quick and dirty. But at least I can still run 16's!

It's been a hot minute, hasn't it? Man I love this car. Still my daily, but it's been too long to write about it all. Hope you don't mind pic dumps!

Let's see, where did I leave off? I gave the tired old suspension a proper sendoff with rallycross with friends! (Photo cred: @242deluxe)

After fixing all the shit I broke, she went straight back to daily duty! All year round of course!

I played around with fitting B6/B7 seats to the C3. Definitely doable with some brackets I mocked up. Probably a future mod, because they can sit quite a bit lower than the UrS seats.

I did, however, fit a late B5 wheel using a spline adapter PN# 191419514A. Horn and airbag are fully functional using a retrofitted B5 clockspring, but I am hesitant to post up details because I don't want people triggering the airbag if they don't know what they're doing. PM me if you want info, though.

Got sick of replacing 034's bushing every 3000 miles, so I cast my own out of polyurethane

Finally, at long last, I overhauled the suspension! I've been collecting parts for about 3 years now.

Thanks dudes! I like those wheels because they don't really demand attention. Good eye, though, I do need some spacers in the rear haha. Fronts are spaced 15mm to clear the calipers, and I never gave the rear the same treatment.

pilihp2 wrote:Did you keep the b6/7 seats in it? or was it just for funsies?

Nah, they're in my dad's B5. I took the opportunity to take measurements for some brackets though. I'll definitely get around to installing my own someday, because it was really nice how much lower they could sit than the UrS4 seats do (which are too high even at lowest setting)

Yeah UrS seats are miserable. Definitely fit but not designed for the factory T44 raised brackets vs the floor mounts on the UrS. Even worse when you're tall as shit. Gotta turn the head in order to not hit the roof.Get some sticky tires on there. I bet that thing will handle wicked.

Tires are definitely my limiting factor right now. I'm on 700 treadwear But damn if it doesn't handle way better than it should!

On the topic of the UrS seat, I modded my passenger seat to sit a little lower. I shorted the pivoting arms for the front height adjustment (and offset the hole due to the sharper bracket angle required). The seat has the same range of adjustment; it's just lowered by about an inch. Unfortunately, the same can't be done for the driver unless you remove the seat memory module.